i was only reminded that today was Rosh Chodesh when girls from my old high school asked me to "babysit" them while they decorated the school last night. i was going to spend the whole night doing homework anyway, so i dragged my computer and five million textbooks to the office and sat there writing a paper. i thought about Adar, and how important it was for us to play pranks on people (mainly our teachers) on Rosh Chodesh Adar. and then i thought about the last prank i pulled.

it was in seminary.

my friend came to me with a brilliant idea; steal everyone's shoes. every single shoe. belonging to 150 girls. many of whom were classic Brooklyn japs. so at 3 am, we systematically went through every room, in every apartment, in both dorm buildings, and collected every shoe we could find. a few rooms locked their doors at night. and some girls woke up and demanded their shoes back. but for the most part we were able to collect about 98% of all the shoes. we loaded them into wheelbarrows and wheeled them across the campus to our school building where we laid every shoe out on the ground. there were over 900 pairs. the sun was rising by the time we finished. and we smelled so bad. i could practically see the fumes rising from the shoes.

in the meantime, there was pandemonium in the dorms.

my friend woke up and attempted to slide into her slippers, and her feet touched the freezing stone floor, which confused her so much that she stumbled into her netilas yadayim bowl of freezing water, which caused her to shriek and wake up her roommate, who woke up with a start and banged her head. although the reactions in the other room weren't as drastic, people were very confused as to where all the shoes had gone.

until someone noticed that all the members of my class were missing from the dorm.

some girls laughed and applauded our prank.
some girls rolled over in bed and pulled the covers back over their heads.
and some girls got really, really mad.
they came storming up over the hill, wearing fuzzy rabbit slippers, mismatched sneakers, and some wearing no shoes at all.
and there were all their shoes. lying out in all their footful glory.
(ironically enough, my roommate and i who were in the same class, forgot to take all of our third roommate's shoes, leaving her with a pair to wear)
the madrichot thought this was a great prank and refused to listen to anyone who complained.

but the problem came when we left the building to go eat breakfast. while we'd had our first class, the Arab workers had done sponja, and now the shoes were soaked. including one 500 dollar pair of shoes. the owner of that wasn't too happy. and alot of girls swore never to speak to us again. so needless to say we were a little ostracized that day. so we kinda kept to ourselves until it all blew over.

and when i got back to my apartment, my closet was empty. my apartment-mates had taken all of my clothing and hid it. every last shirt. so we were all even.

and then the next day we got to our classroom to find that it was totally empty. some girls had snuck into the building the night before and set up our entire classroom on the roof. so we learned on the roof that day.

it was the best Rosh Chodesh Adar ever.